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Hi Joseph,
Joseph Mack wrote:
> Just got back and put my computers together at home.
> I've been leaving at 7am and not getting back till 9-10pm.
>
> I thought the talk went well. It was standing room only with
> about 150-200 people (I counted chairs afterwards).
>
Thank you very much for giving the talk.
>
> I designed the talk so that people set up
> the LVS and get it working. (Wensong, you have the talk
> as I gave it, can you put it on the webpage? A few people
> asked if they could get it) I thought
I just put in on the LVS webpage. Its URL is
http://proxy.iinchina.net/~wensong/ippfvs/Joseph.Mack/
>
> this was the most important thing since the project was
> relatively new and I wanted people to be able to go
> home and install it and get it to work, so spreading
> the word around.
>
> I brought a portable LVS with me (photos coming
> as soon as they come off the camera and I find a scanner).
> I was the first talk after lunch and had time to setup.
> There were plenty of people who came early and just happened
> to watch the setup.
> I thought people would be more willing to believe
> that the LVS worked if I was prepared to put my money
> where my mouth was and could set the thing up while they were
> waiting. I gave my talk
> from the html on the 2 servers (one by tunnel and one
> by localnode on the director).
> I had planned to put markers into the html
> on the two servers to show which server the page
> was coming from, but I didn't have time for
> that.
>
> I explained the packet path twice for each setup
> (NAT, TUN, DR), by showing the IP's and packet
> path on a diagram,
> the ippfvsadm commands and then showing a table
> with the source and dest for the packet at each
> hop and the contents at each stage.
>
> At the end I pulled
> one of the ethernet cables to demonstrate failover. The
> mail from the alerts started pouring through every 20secs
> and was clearly visible to the audience (murmurings etc
> from the darkened room). The failed server
> didn't get switched out (according to ippfvsadm),
> I think because I had disabled
> that part of the alert to test it when I'd set it
> up a few days earlier. This was the only thing that went
> wrong, but people seemed prepared to accept that the LVS
> was responding to the cable being pulled.
>
> There were no questions during the talk, which I interpreted
> as everyone following the talk.
>
> The talk took about 40mins.
>
> There were a few questions afterwards -
>
> What happens to your connection if a server fails (you loose
> the whole connection and have to start your ftp again
> or click on the link again)
>
> Will the failed server be brought back into the LVS
> when it comes back up again (yes, automatically
> by the same script that took it out).
>
> Some poeple wanted the tunneling explained again and I asked
> them to come up after the talk (about 10-15 people did and
> they seemed to get it eventually - the questions stopped
> anyhow).
>
It's great! Congratulations!
>
> I brought buttons with Spike's logo on it to hand out
> to people to wear. I was going to give them out
> to anyone who'd installed LVS or was prepared to
> answer questions about LVS at the Expo.
> I brought 20, being all I could arrange in the time.
> Knowing how fast people snap up anything free I was
> dreading the disappointed people standing around waiting
> for theirs. As it turns out only 4 people asked for them
> after the talk and I have about 10 left. I'll reserve
> some for the developers in the credits in the talk
> otherwise anyone on this mailing list can have 1
> for free on a first-come, first-served basis. Please
> send me your s-mail address if I don't have it already.
>
> There were some people in the audience who were well
> aquainted with the theory. One is on this mailing list
> and hasn't posted anything, so I'll let him remain
> anonymous until he's ready to say something. He's either
> using LVS for a project he has at work or is waiting
> for the 2.2.x version to use in this project.
>
> One person's comment afterwards was that the LVS
> is a level 4 switch, which I hadn't thought about.
I guess it is, if the level 3 switch is for switching IP
packets and the level 4 switch is for switching
TCP/UDP connections.
>
> One person was interested in the geographic
> based load director and wanted me to let him
> know when it was done.
>
> The main impression I got was that people hadn't installed
> it and didn't know much about it. I assume people had
> read the write-up in the conference procedings and had
> recognised it as being useful enough to them to come
> to the talk.
>
> Since people in the audience didn't know much
> about the project, I decided not to mention the
> problems we were having with PHT unless anyone asked.
> I had a little speech ready if any questions came
> up but none did. PHT came up at the ExtremeLinux
> BOF where PHT was mentioned as providing a Cluster
> Server based on the LVS source patch for what they
> thought would be $1000/server. Some of the
> people in the BOF had already told me that they weren;t
> happy about the credit PHT was giving LVS for it's work.
> At $1000/server I didn't think the rest of the people in
> the room would be interested in PHT's product.
> I was asked for comments and decided to say nothing.
> Perhaps I should have - can't tell if it would have
> been better to or just different. With the audience
> at the LVS talk, I had decided that the best approach
> for the first public revealing of the code, would
> be to get as many people to install it as possible.
>
> PHT was in the preliminary schedule to give a
> talk earlier the same morning, but wasn't in
> the final schedules. I didn't see PHT anywhere
> at the conference.
>
> Setting up the server demo didn't go real well
> and pointed out to me the pitfalls of relying
> on other people's hardware. I originally
> thought I was going to have a mobile 4 node
> Beowulf to use. Although I allowed plenty of
> time to set it up (a whole weekend)
> Robert Brown from the
> ExtremeLinux group, who kindly offered me
> the setup, was too busy with his own work
> for me to be able to get in to set it up. As it turns
> out he'd just bought the 4 nodes for himself
> and first one then another node wouldn't boot.
> I was left the night before the talk without
> a setup. I brought in my rather heavy 2 node
> beowulf, which was already setup and working,
> and was going to use one of his 2 working nodes as a client.
> Still I had problems. I was using coax and
> their machines were 100BaseT. I borrowed
> 2 100BaseT NICs (realtech 8139) and eventually got a NIC
> to work in one machine, but the mouse module
> wouldn't load at the same time, so no X there.
> The same NIC driver loaded on my other
> node (with indentical mobo, one node glibc-2.1
> and the other libc5) but ifconfig gave
> me "invalid flag errors". I got the same
> thing with the driver in the kernel and with
> another NIC (Intel 10/100) showing the problem
> was not with the cards but my machine.
> Someone suggested I
> pull all the unneccessary cards from my
> machine and it worked (I thought PCI cards
> auto negotiated interrupts, but apparently
> not in the 2.0.x kernels). The machine with 1 SCSI
> card (ncr53...) wouldn't work with the NIC,
> but the one with 2 SCSI cards was happier
> (loaded the nic driver, but not the mouse
> driver). I spent much
> of the morning recompiling the kernel on a
> 100MHz pentium classic. This machine did load
> the mouse driver and I could X with it.
>
> When I got to the room I realised that the client
> machine was setup for a 1600x1280 monitor which
> the projector wouldn't handle. I couldn't change
> the resolution with alt/ctrl/+-, but no problem, telnet
> in to the client and DISPLAY back to the only machine
> which could X. However I couldn't login as root
> remotely to export the DISPLAY... fixed that.
>
> After having started at
> 7:30am to set everything up it took till 1:28pm,
> 2 minutes before the talk, before I had the
> client displaying onto the screen for the audience,
> the html stored on the servers. I then found
> that the failover was sending mail alerts
> but not removing the failed server from the ippfvsadm
> table. Steven Tweedie at this stage was trying to
> find out who I was so he could introduce me.
> It sounded like he was the person who put the talk
> into the conference in the first place as he
> knew a lot about the project and about Wensong.
> At 1:30 I started the talk and decided
> that I would have to go with an imperfect failover
> demo.
>
> I had brought a TV camera to record the talk
> to send off to Wensong, but didn't have time
> to set it up.
>
That's all right. Thank you anyway.
>
> Matthew, would Rebel.com be up for a loaner
> of 3 netwinders or some of those nice rack units
> (2 or 4 machines) for a subsequent demo?
> This was not the way to go.
>
> BTW I saw Scott and gave him my business card.
>
> Further publicity:
>
> A local group, the North Carolina System Admins
> (to which I belong) has asked for a demo
> at their next meeting (2 weeks). Also my
> work wants a talk too. (Matthew, any chance
> of a few boxes for these, I'll ship them
> back insured etc...).
>
> The Linux J. wants an article. If it's OK
> with everyone I suggest
> Wensong write the main part and
> I'll write a side bar about installing it.
> They want no more than 3200 words (4 pages).
> Wensong how about I talk to you offline.
>
Great! So, you and I will coauthor an article for Linux
Journal. Talk to you offline later.
>
> Todo:
>
> 1. I'll write a HOWTO. It can be on the
> LVS webpage for comments for a while and
> when everyone is happy with it, I'll send
> it off the the LDP.
>
Great! I look forward to seeing it.
>
> 2. It would be nice if the LVS webpage could
> be on other machines and served
> by LVS. I'll see if I can use my machine
> at work. I will have to ask the right people,
> but I think I can make a reasonable case.
> It's a solaris machine and I'd have to use
> a high number port. Anyone else got a site
> they want to volunteer?
>
I can get a VirtualHost configuration for the site on
a HP NetServer in China, if you don't complain the
long response time due to the limited Internet bandwidth
in China currently.
The other question is which name is good for the LVS
project:
www.LVS.org
www.LinuxVS.org
www.LinuxVirtualServer.org
www.LinuxDirector.org
or any other good name?
>
> Thanks Matthew and Wensong for your help
> with getting the talk going.
>
> Joe
>
> --
> Joseph Mack, NA3T, FM05lw EME(B,D)
> mailto:mack@xxxxxxxxxxx
> AZ_PROJ map server at http://www.wm7d.net/azproj.shtml
Thanks again,
Wensong
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